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0 pointsslg1mo ago0 comments

And by "real wages" you mean "Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over". You chose a number that specifically factored out the negatives like dropping participation rate[1] and underemployment (couldn't find the isolated number for underemployment in 30 seconds of googling, so here's one that's tempered by including unemployment too)[2]. It also glosses over the heart of the problem by using median. If 38% of the population suddenly had their wages drop to $0, it wouldn't show up when looking at the median values.

I also don't see why you're citing the nominal federal minimum wage. The nominal value is totally irrelevant to the conversation. $1 is still nominally $1, but according to the link it is also now $0.51 in purchasing power.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/

[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/u6rate

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JumpCrisscross1mo ago

> by "real wages" you mean "Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over"

Yes.

> You chose a number that specifically factored out the negatives like dropping participation rate[1] and underemployment

I chose a consistent dataset. One of many. (Dropping participation rate is affected by stuff like demographics in addition to underemployment.)

If you have a credible source that shows declining real wages since 2000, I'd love to see it.

> don't see why you're citing the nominal federal minimum wage. The nominal value is totally irrelevant to the conversation. $1 is still nominally $1, but according to the link it is also now $0.51 in purchasing power

If $1 is 51¢ today, then $1.40 is 71¢ today. Rising nominal wages is how real wage gains are generated.

slgOP1mo ago

>If you have a credible source that shows declining real wages since 2000, I'd love to see it.

My original comment was about growing inequality and my second comment was describing why the metric you cited and median real wages in general don't address that issue. So no, I will not be looking for a better real wages metric, because it is not the appropriate measure to capture inequality. You can find plenty of numbers and charts on that problem here[1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

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